The Accidental Florist

she was in contact at least twice a week with her parents via e-mail, it would be nice to sit around the kitchen table just talking to them. Or take them to restaurants, and see some new sights that had sprung up all over the Chicago area since they’d last been here.
    Then she thought of her sister, Marty. She and Marty were like oil and water. They’d never shared common interests or values. Marty had been married at least four times. They hadn’t laid eyes on each other for well over a decade. More likely two decades. Jane realized that Marty hadn’t ever met Mike, Katie, and Todd. She had no interest in children. They didn’t exchange birthday or holiday cards or gifts.
    Jane was also afraid to invite Marty, because she always had an inappropriate man, to say the least, living with her. The only reason Jane knew this was because Marty was always nagging their parents to help support the current husband or boyfriend. She never succeeded and never gave up trying.
    Jane also knew that her parents, who complained about Marty, never told Marty anything about Jane or her family. Marty never asked. It was as if she’d forgotten she ever had a sister. She’d have to e-mail her folks to see if there was any slim chance they wanted their other daughter at the wedding. She was sure she knew the answer. But it was the polite thing to ask them anyway.
    She was happily distracted from all these worries by Shelley knocking at the kitchen door. Shelley was carrying a big paper bag with paper handles that were about to give up the ghost.
    “Come in. What’s all this?“
    “Fabrics,“ Shelley said grimly. “Clear your dining room table.“
    “There’s nothing on it now except a tablecloth,“ Jane replied.
    With a flourish Shelley dumped a good fifty strips about four inches wide and twelve inches long on the table.
    “Jeepers!“ Jane exclaimed with a laugh. “You didn’t mix up the charcoal piece I got at the tux place, did you?“
    “Ye of little faith. No, that one’s in my purse. We’ll put it at the end of the table so we don’t lose it.“
    They started pawing through the samples of fabric. “This checkerboard thing won’t do,“ Jane said.
    “Nor will the lumpy black-and-white.“
    They threw both on the floor.
    Sadly, as they went on, nearly everything went onto the floor. There were only two pieces of fabric of the fifty that almost matched, but not quite.
    “If you want dark, you’re going to have to go with pure black,“ Shelley said.
    “Sounds like one of those old trashy paperback mysteries written by men in the 1930s. The Bride Wore Black.“
    “If you wore a black long skirt and short jacket with a bright red blouse, would that do?“
    “All the people behind me at the church wedding are just going to see the black. There’s tan, of course. And the groomsmen would look like they were National Guard guys.“
    “White?“ Shelley suggested with a disgusted shrug. “No, no, no.“
    “Pink?“
    “Too girly-girly,“ Jane said.
    “Bright red, then?“
    “Floozy.“
    “Carmine red?“
    Jane paused. “Maybe.“ She laughed. “Mel’s mother will probably fall into a faint as I come down the aisle.“

Chapter Eight

    On Monday Jane got back to work, tweaking her manuscript, and double checking her historical research and punctuation. She hadn’t yet figured out the exact dates and what days they fell on but she had a bookmark on her computer for any month of any year you wanted to look up. She might have to adjust a few things considering that her heroine was a churchgoer.
    Since Todd had grown up, he’d decided that Sunday school was too childish and church services were too boring. And Jane herself had more or less given up as well. She’d only gone to church to set a good example for the children and the church that they’d always gone to was turning quite a bit to the fundamentalist viewpoint anyway. And anytime lately that she had showed up, somebody tried to buttonhole her to run some sort of fund-raising project.
    She pulled up a bookmark for the year she needed and made a printout of the four months the story involved. Later she’d cut them out and enlarge each one on her copier and thumbtack them to her bulletin board.
    The phone rang as she was printing out the year she was working on. “Hello, Jack, what’s up?“
    “You need to hire a contractor. Your uncle Jim liked the one he chose. You should talk to him. Or get another bid on the advice of someone else you